Two For Tuesday

I was just upstairs uploading the entire Peter Gabriel library into my iTunes, not because it wasn’t there before (because it was), or because I’ve just discovered a new love for PG (I’ve loved him “long time”), but because of the great parting of my iTunes, where some songs were saved, and others sadly were not. I’ve taken to randomly selecting an artist/band, clicking on one song, and holding my breath.

If the little box comes up that tells me to locate the file, I know it’s hopeless, and I can let out my breath in a sigh, but if the song starts playing instead it’s like the sound angels make when they enter a room. You know, little bells, and that high pitched “ahhhhh.” When I clicked on “Red Rain” yesterday the little box came up, I sighed, and I went straight for my backup Peter Gabriel MP3 CD. It’s loading now. It’s a good Tuesday.

I love Tuesdays because I was born on a Tuesday, but also because it’s not Monday. While Mondays reek of desperation to keep the weekend going, Tuesdays are a solid understanding that the week is in full swing, and ready to be enjoyed. So, on this day, of all days, I like to pay homage to the things that are important to me, to the things that for some reason or another I’m grateful for. Here’s another Two For Tuesday…

1. I’m grateful for the heat. As summer begins to wane I appreciate the height of the afternoon when the sun is high up in the sky and beating down on me. At the beginning of the season I kept waiting for the heat to kick in, because I like extremes, and it took an awfully long time to show up, but it eventually came. Then the countdown began until the fall-like weather began to take over. That time has come, with the cool mornings and the breezy evenings, but the afternoons, they’re still all mine.

2. I’m grateful for Michael J. Fox. I just finished listening to his autobiography Lucky Man for the first time. I’ve read the book several times but it was my first chance getting to hear the actor himself read the book, and it certainly did not disappoint. There’s something to be said for hearing the emotion in the words. It gave me a chance to live vicariously through his re-telling of the moment he found out he had Parkinson’s, and the moments after, when he tried valiantly to hide it, to preserve some sense of his privacy despite his occupation. It makes me appreciate him more, as an actor, but as a human being even more.